3 Northern Ireland Affairs
The future of the Northern Ireland
Affairs Committee and the NIO
44. The transfer of policing and justice matters
to the Northern Ireland Assembly and Executive has substantial
implications for the future of the Northern Ireland Office and
for any future Northern Ireland Affairs Committee. Our role, set
out in Standing Order No. 152 of the House of Commons, is to "examine
the expenditure, administration and policy of the Northern Ireland
Office". We may also consider the administration and expenditure
of the Crown Solicitor's Office and other matters within the responsibilities
of the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.
45. The NIO currently has responsibility for Northern
Ireland's constitutional and security issues, particularly, law
and order, political affairs, policing and criminal justice. Of
those, only "political affairs" would remain after devolution,
providing a secretariat for the Secretary of State and dealing
with reserved matters including elections and human rights. The
NIO is also responsible for matters relating to the licensing
of and legislation concerning firearms and explosives.
46. The NIO has a number of agencies; the Northern
Ireland Prison Service, the Compensation Agency for Northern Ireland,
Forensic Science Northern Ireland, on which we have recently reported,
and Youth Justice Agency, all of which will be devolved. It also
funds two legal officesthe Crown Solicitor's Office and
the Public Prosecution Service. The latter will be devolved to
Stormont with policing and justice; the former remains the responsibility
of the Northern Ireland Office.
47. In short, the devolution of policing and justice,
which we fully welcome, will leave any future Northern Ireland
Affairs Committee with a substantially reduced remit.
THE WORK OF THIS COMMITTEE
48. None the less, as our work over the past five
years has shown, a Westminster Committee has a unique perspective
on policy and administration within Northern Ireland and has a
role to play in identifying areas of concern. Indeed, any successor
Committee would, we trust, wish to follow up the work that we
have recently published in our reports on the Omagh Bombing and
Television Broadcasting. Any future legislation to introduce a
Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland will be a matter for Westminster,
and we have published evidence that we received on that matter
for the assistance of any future Committee. The Government has
yet to decide which, if any, of the recommendations made by the
Consultative Group on the Past (co-chaired by Lord Eames and Mr
Denis Bradley) will be adopted, and their response to that will
provide considerable fruit for further thought. In addition, the
expected publication in the near future of Lord Saville's report
into the events of Sunday 30 January 1972 (Bloody Sunday) is likely
to raise significant political issues for the Northern Ireland
Office and its Secretary of State.
49. We believe that a continuing UK-wide perspective
on the work done by the Assembly and the Executive at Stormont
would be both useful and desirable. In particular, a future Northern
Ireland Affairs Committee should be charged with overseeing not
just the work of the Northern Ireland Office as it remains, but
with taking a strategic view of how devolution is operating within
Northern Ireland, at least in its early years. To that end, we
recommend that the House of Commons Standing Order which sets
out the remit of departmental Select Committees at Westminster,
should be amended to include within the remit of the Northern
Ireland Affairs Committee the maintenance of relations with the
Northern Ireland Assembly and strategic oversight of the devolution
settlement in Northern Ireland.
OUR INQUIRIES
50. We have, over the course of the past five years,
published 10 major Reports on matters including organised crime,
the cost of policing the past, community restorative justice and
the Prison Service and Forensic Science Service. Beyond the field
of policing and justice, we have considered tourism (before it
became a devolved matter) and television broadcasting. We have
examined the relationship between the Governments of the United
Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland in the fields of policing
and justice. We have considered the recommendations made by Lord
Eames and Mr Bradley on how Northern Ireland may deal with the
legacy of its past.
51. We have above noted some of the advances made
following recommendations made in our Report on Prisons. As we
approach the end of the Parliament, it is as yet too soon to report
progress on our more recent work on, the Consultative Group on
the Past and Television Broadcasting. Follow up on the work we
did on tourism and education now properly belongs with the relevant
Committees of the Northern Ireland Assembly.
The Omagh bombing
52. Most importantly of all, we have identified questions
that remain unanswered surrounding the bombing of Omagh in August
1998, an atrocity committed by the Real IRA which left 29 people
and two unborn babies dead, and which was the worst mass murder
committed in the history of Northern Ireland. In that Report,
we referred to our one significant disagreement with and disappointment
at the conduct of Her Majesty's Government: we made plain, yet
again, our concern at the refusal of the Prime Minister to grant
permission for our Chairman to have an opportunity to read the
whole report produced by the Intelligence Services Commissioner,
the Rt Hon. Sir Peter Gibson, on his review of intercepted intelligence
in relation to the bombing.[49]
Community Restorative Justice
53. The Committee conducted an inquiry in 2006-07
into community-based restorative justice schemes, reporting in
January 2007 and making more than 20 recommendations.[50]
We were glad to hear from the new Chief Constable that he sees
a continuing role for restorative justice after devolution has
been completed.[51]
Forensic Science Service
54. In February 2010, the Committee published its
Report on Forensic Science Northern Ireland, in which we drew
attention to the excellence of the work done by that service but
also to the imperative need for it to be rehoused in satisfactory
premises at the earliest possible date.[52]
Cross-border co-operation
55. In the field of cross-border co-operation, however,
we are happy to note some significant progress in one area in
particular. We recommended that reciprocal legislation, passed
in the 1970s, allowing certain largely terrorist-related offences
committed in the UK to be tried in the Republic of Ireland and
vice versa, should be extended to cover new offences, such as
rape, money-laundering and human trafficking (the latter perceived,
as Assistant Chief Constable Harris told us, as a growing problem
across the island of Ireland).[53]
Both the UK and the Republic of Ireland Governments have responded
positively to our suggestion, and discussions are under way on
how new offences might be covered by extensions to the existing
legislation or by new legislation.
Organised crime in Northern Ireland
56. In the area of organised crime, too, we may report
some progress during the course of the 2005 Parliament. We reported
on organised crime in Northern Ireland in July 2006. We are grateful
to the Northern Ireland Audit Office (NIAO) for undertaking a
study of progress made since then in the areas on which we made
recommendations and for reporting it to us in a private briefing
in March 2010. The NIAO's memorandum, jointly prepared with the
National Audit Office, is attached to this Report (see Ev. 48),
and it has published a detailed note of progress made and the
conclusions that they have drawn from it.[54]
That note, containing some 50 recommendations on action, has been
submitted to the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) at the Northern
Ireland Assembly by the Comptroller and Auditor General for Northern
Ireland, and we should expect our successor Committee in the next
Parliament to monitor the outcome of the PAC's consideration.
57. The Organised Crime Task Force (OCTF), established
in 2000 and restructured in 2005, is currently comprised of representatives
from the NIO, the National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS),
the PSNI, the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA), HM Revenue
and Customs (HMRC), the Home Office, the Northern Ireland Policing
Board, the UK Border Agency, the CBI, the Federation of Small
Businesses and the Northern Ireland Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
58. The organisations now involved in the OTCF include
both those which will be accountable directly to the Northern
Ireland Assembly at Stormont and some, such as SOCA and HMRC,
which are responsible for UK-wide activity and therefore accountable
to Westminster. This raises the question of where precisely responsibility
for scrutiny of their activities in a Northern Ireland context
will lie, once policing and justice powers are devolved to the
Northern Ireland Assembly and Executive. The NIAO recommends that
a future Northern Ireland Affairs Committee continue to monitor
activity in this regard.[55]
We agree with the Northern Ireland Audit Office that the Northern
Ireland Affairs Committee must keep under review in future the
operation of the Organised Crime Task Force in Northern Ireland
in so far as its activities are conducted by bodies which have
UK-wide crime-fighting responsibilities, and we recommend to our
successor Committee that it should do so.
59. The NIAO also raised with us some concern that
individual Departments within the Northern Ireland Executive are
vulnerable to targeting by organised criminals and gangs. In particular,
social security, housing benefit, social development programme
funding and the single farm payment scheme may offer scope for
fraud, and the NAO and NIAO suggest Northern Ireland Departments
need to be vigilant. For example,
some cases of known fraud against the [Social
Security] Agency could have been committed only by a person or
persons acting with most of the characteristics of organised crime
[...] Organised social security fraud is already a significant
problem in [Great Britain]: there is no reason to believe that
similar attacks are not already being made and will not be made
here [in Northern Ireland] in future".[56]
We trust that Departments within the Northern Ireland
Executive will take due note of the warnings of the Northern Ireland
Audit Office that a number of publicly funded programmes are vulnerable
to the activities of organised criminals.
60. We recommended in our Report on Cross-border
co-operation between the Governments of the United Kingdom and
the Republic of Ireland in 2009 that the Government should
consider adopting Schengen provisions in relation to hot pursuit
across international borders. We had heard from SOCA that such
provisions would greatly assist the fight against organised crime.
The Government rejected that recommendation, saying that practical
cross-border co-operation between the PSNI and An Garda Siochana,
which we had praised, did not at present require it. The NIAO
suggests, however, that the Government should again consider whether
adoption of the Schengen provisions on hot pursuit would contribute
to countering drug crime and other forms of organised crime. Its
detailed note states:
Co-operation with the Garda Siochana could be
strengthened by adopting the provisions of the Schengen Agreement
permitting hot pursuit across international borders. We recommend
that NIO, together with other departments as appropriate, should
review whether adoption of the Agreement's provisions would contribute
to countering drugs and other forms of organised crime".[57]
61. We acknowledge that the Government has not thought
it right to adopt the Schengen provisions on hot pursuit hitherto.
We are aware, too, that there are differences of opinion within
policing and enforcement agencies on the usefulness of the provisions
in the context of the land border between the UK and the Republic
of Ireland. We note, however, that the Northern Ireland Audit
Office has added its voice to those who favour adoption as a means
of combating organised crime in both directions across that border,
and we believe that this is a further matter our successors in
the next Parliament may wish to keep under consideration.
62. The Northern Ireland Audit Office has suggested
that the value of organised crime in the UK as a whole is estimated
at between £20 and £25 billion, but no separate figure
exists specifically for Northern Ireland, and it is in the nature
of organised crime that any figure is, in any event, to some extent
guesswork. The NIAO does, however, believe that drug-related activity,
human trafficking, ID theft and illegal dumping are among organised
crimes on the increase, while those relating to oils/fuels, cigarettes,
alcohol and counterfeiting are either at a steady level or reducing.[58]
On oils frauds, for example, the National Audit Office notes that
"The general assessment, shared by both the Police Service
of Northern Ireland (PSNI) and HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC),
is that the incidence of this crime type is reducing in the wake
of more effective enforcement, with sales of unlawful fuel now
steady".[59]
63. The implications of this shift from older types
of organised crime and towards new types will require more detailed
consideration than is possible in this Report. The growth, however,
of immigration-related crimes such as human trafficking matched
by a reduction in crimes that have for decades funded paramilitary
activity, such as fuel frauds, may, however, reflect changes both
in the culture and the population of Northern Ireland and some
shift away from the sectarian divide that disfigured it for so
much of the 20th century. Once again, this is something
our successors in the next Parliament may wish to keep under review.
Conclusion
64. We have sought to visit Northern Ireland between
four and six times each year, and to make an annual visit to the
Republic of Ireland. In addition to our regular visits to Belfast,
we have travelled to Omagh, Newry, the border areas of South Armagh,
Downpatrick and Crossmaglen. During the preparation of our Report
on tourism, we travelled throughout the Province.
65. All who have served on the Committee during the
Parliament would wish to record our thanks to the Clerks who have
served us diligentlyMr James Rhys from May 2005; Mr Steve
Priestley from November 2007; and Mr David Weir from November
2008and to the Committee's staff. We are grateful for all
that they have done to ensure the smooth and effective working
of the Committee and for the arrangements that they have made
for our many visits to Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
66. We have been privileged to meet remarkable peopleamong
them, Michael Gallagher and his fellow officers of the Omagh Support
and Self-Help Group who have campaigned so hard for justice in
the memory of their loved ones; Stephen and Briege Quinn, whose
dignity in face of the murder of their son, Paul, is an example
to all; and Sir Hugh Orde, whose seven years as Chief Constable
of the Police Service of Northern Ireland were marked by significant
success in winning the confidence of the whole community.
67. We thank Commissioner Fachtna Murphy of An Garda
Siochana, and his predecessor, Commissioner Noel Conroy: their
courtesy and incisive briefings illuminated our understanding
of the issues facing two police services across an international
land border. Dozens more people showed us unfailing kindness and
courtesy, and their freely shared knowledge has been of vital
importance to our work. We are grateful to members of the Government
of the Republic of Ireland who have regularly and willingly given
of their time to meet the Committee during its visits to Dublin.
We are grateful to have been given the opportunity to meet colleagues
from both Houses in the Oireachtas. We also record our thanks
to successive British Ambassadors in Dublin for their hospitality,
their briefings to the Committee and the opportunities that they
have provided at the Embassy and the Residence to meet leading
figures in the life of the Republic of Ireland.
68. We pay tribute, finally, to the politicians who
enabled change to occur. The appointment in 2007 of Rt Hon. and
Rev. Dr Ian Paisley as First Minister and Mr Martin McGuinness
as deputy First Minister provided the key which unlocked the process
that has led to the likely devolution of policing and justice
on 12 April 2010. We were pleased to welcome the establishment
of the Executive and a new Assembly in 2007 and were delighted
to be able to follow the development of events between then and
the retirement of Dr Paisley. Our Chairman represented us at the
Invest Northern Ireland conference called at the end of Dr Paisley's
period in office and was present throughout the following week
in Northern Ireland when the Committee gave a dinner in honour
of Dr Paisley and made a presentation to him.
69. The Committee is especially grateful to the present
First Minister, Rt Hon. Peter Robinson MP, and his colleagues
for meeting us, and for the opportunities that we have had since
2007 to meet Members of the Legislative Assembly in Northern Ireland.
We record our thanks to the Speaker of the Assembly and his officials
for enabling us to meet and to hold public evidence sessions at
Stormont, and for the hospitality that we have received when holding
meetings and press conferences there to publish our Reports.
70. We pay tribute, finally, to the Prime Minister,
and to his predecessor, Rt Hon. Tony Blair, and to Rt Hon. Shaun
Woodward MP, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Rt Hon.
Paul Goggins MP, Minister of State, Rt Hon. Peter Hain, who as
Secretary of State commissioned the work of the Consultative Group,
and all those who have held ministerial office in the NIO since
May 2005. Their joint and individual efforts, building on the
work of their predecessors and maintaining a bipartisan policy
towards Northern Ireland, have been crucial to success during
the long and often difficult process towards peace and stability
in one of the most remarkably beautiful and historically fascinating
parts of the United Kingdom.
49 Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, The Omagh
bombing: some remaining questions, Fourth Report of Session
2009-10, HC 374. Back
50
Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, Draft Protocol for Community-based
Restorative Justice Schemes, First Report of Session 2006-07,
HC 87. Back
51
Q 121 Back
52
Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, Forensic Science Northern
Ireland, Fifth Report of Session 2009-10, HC 314. Back
53
Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, Cross-border co-operation
between the Governments of the United Kingdom and the Republic
of Ireland, Second Report of Session 2008-09, HC 1031, para
; and Qq 124-27 Back
54
Northern Ireland Audit Office, Detailed Note accompanying the
memorandum to the Committee of Public Accounts from the Comptroller
and Auditor General for Northern Ireland: Organised Crime: developments
since the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee Report 2006, 10
January 2010. Back
55
Ibid, para 16. Back
56
Ibid, para 2.2.18 Back
57
Ibid, para 1.6.24 Back
58
Ibid. Back
59
Northern Ireland Audit Office, Detailed Note accompanying the
memorandum to the Committee of Public Accounts from the Comptroller
and Auditor General for Northern Ireland: Organised Crime: developments
since the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee Report 2006, 10
January 2010, para 1.6.3.
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